Home Army

The Home Army (Armia Krajowa) was the army of the Polish Underground State during World War II. With as many as 600,000 soldiers in 1944, the Home Army was one of the three largest resistance movements against Nazi Germany during the war, and it derailed German trains and helped the Soviet Union in advancing west into Poland to liberate it from the Axis Powers. The Home Army was abandoned by the USSR during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 because they were loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in London and not the Moscow-based communist government, and its revolt was crushed. In January 1945, the group was disbanded as the Red Army liberated much of Poland, with the members fearing arrest by the Soviets and their NKVD. Most of its members fled to the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the war, with those remaining in Poland being arrested or executed for being obstacles to the takeover of Poland by the Polish People's Republic and the communists.